In recent years, commitment to quality of products comes to be stronger among consumers and retailers. However, there was no means for the consumers and the retailers to know whether or not the products arrived at stores are genuine or whether or not the products they received are from authorized agents.
In other words, in the conventional system for distributing products, many middlemen (e.g., several wholesale stores) exist between the producers and consumers. Such conventional system, in which many middlemen exist between the producers and consumers, makes it difficult to provide the consumers accurate information about each individual product (e.g., information about a producing area, a producer name, a kind, a production date, and quality of the each individual product) when the products arrives at the consumers.
As the typical product management system, an information acquisition system acquiring individual information of each farm product has been proposed. The system enables easy providing of the individual information of each farm product to, for example, the consumers (e.g., Patent Document 1).
Patent document 1 discloses such a technique in which an ID number as an own identifier for each individual is given to a farm product such as a melon, resulting in allowing a person (e.g., a consumer) other than the farm producer of the melon (e.g., a commercial farm or an agricultural cooperative) to freely acquire individual information about the melon based on the ID number. For the sake of executing the above system, a label (e.g., a seal or a sticker) with the ID number is attached to the farm product.
Further, the individual information about the farm product is accumulated in a computer system of a separately provided independent neutral organization (e.g., a database company) together with the ID number, resulting in assembling a database. The producer transmits the ID number to the computer system as well as transmits the individual information, corresponding to the farm product, including a producing area, a producer name, a kind, a cultivation method, a harvest date, and quality (e.g., sugar content) of the farm product, to the computer system.
At least one computer is provided to each retailer shop and each consumer's home. Each computer is connected to the computer system via the general public line in a mutually communicative manner. The retailer shop or the consumer transmits the ID number on the label attached to the farm product to the computer system from the computer of his own. This enables the retailer shop or the consumer to acquire the individual information about the farm product identified by the ID number.
For controlling agricultural and marine products stocked by a distributor, it is necessary to know information to be identified (e.g., quality information about an arrival date and a harvest date effecting on freshness and a component different according to a process purpose) in the stock control of each stock product. With the information, for example, stock products having elder arrival date are sold by lowering the price prior to stock products of the same kind having newer arrival date. Conventionally, similarly to the above described technique, attachment of the label with the ID number to the farm product allows the computer system to retrieve stock control information based on the ID number.